Parents, do we have a problem?

In light of worrying reports about the rise of children assaulting their parents, Wendy can't help but wonder if the gentle parenting techniques favoured by modern parents are at the root of the problem? Are we hindering or helping our kids by parenting them gently?

Two headlines make it difficult not to conclude that perhaps my generation of child-centred parents risks being a little bit too soft in their child rearing styles. Either that, or something else is going seriously wrong.

“Scores of children under the age of 10 have been investigated by police for attacking their parents, including 71 cases where parents called police after children under the age of nine assaulted them between July 2011 and last June,” is one confronting story.

And there were another 1,800 incidents reported involving children aged 10 to 14 for offences including assault, arson and death threats. Some of the offences were deemed serious enough for the children to be facing charges.

A worrying trend

A 14-year-old boy punched and kicked his grandmother after fighting with his parents, and a 42-year-old mother told The Herald Sun reporter, Alex White, that her 15-year-old girl assaulted her, throwing her around “like a ragdoll” for trying to take away her mobile.

From The Herald Sun:

“I couldn’t do anything, I was in shock. I couldn’t hit her back, this was my daughter.”

During the rampage, Jane’s daughter smashed windows in the house and destroyed a door, before grabbing the back of her mother’s head and smashing her face into a bookshelf.

The attack stopped only when her 10-year-old son called the police from a cordless phone in another room.

Across all age groups, more than 8,000 parents were attacked by their own offspring last financial year.

Hundreds of families have been forced to get intervention orders to protect them from their children.

Victoria Police have previously flagged the issue as a growing problem.

Wes Hosking reports that according to the Education Department, 18 primary school students were expelled between February and August last year, two each in years 1 and 2, and almost 2,100 were suspended (including 68 preps) – an increase of 37 percent in two years.

Increasing violence and extreme misbehaviour among primary-aged children is a “worrying trend” according to Principals Association president, Gabrielle Leigh.

So just what’s going on here?

If you put these two stories together it certainly appears the less authoritarian styles of parenting popular in the last decade or more are leaving some children with no idea about boundaries, consideration for others or self control.

Parenting trends come and go and the one that has been in fashion, and is still very much in vogue, is gentle parenting; where you allow children to express themselves naturally and try to find schools and activities that suit their innate personality rather than placing them in uncomfortable situations. At the same time, winning and losing is out, and rewarding every child for participation is in.

We’ve struggled hard in my generation of parents to make each child feel special and to nurture the skills they do have rather than emphasise areas in which they may be “failing” to meet someone else’s standards.

Every child gets a ribbon or even a trophy for turning up to things such as sports activities, and even the humble pass the parcel now has a little prize for each child hidden between the layers, rather than just one at the end.

The idea is to give children a strong sense of their own worth, and to foster a sense of security, safety and adequacy rather than risk anyone feeling sub-standard or left out.

But does ‘gentle parenting’ work?

You can see all the great theory here, and this kind of parenting does produce many very centred, balanced and secure kids who will not grow up struggling with the stigma of being the last kid picked by his or her peers to join the footy or netball team.

At the same time, we’re having smaller families, so parents have more time and energy to pour into each child than perhaps parents of previous generations did.

I am a fan of gentle parenting, but the older kids get in the great adventure that is parenting, the more you realise the incredible importance of good old-fashioned rules and boundaries.

No matter how much you’d like to avoid morphing into the kind of authority figure you may have bristled at as a child, you realise that if children don’t feel there are limits and lines they must not cross, then despite your good intentions you have failed them.

And look, all this speculation may be off the mark. Perhaps, as family violence detective Inspector Steve Soden told the Herald Sun, alcohol and family breakdown may be the big factors in the deteriorating behaviour of a large enough group of kids to make a bump in the statistics.

Parents are under pressure, as the economy shrinks and the cost of living rises. But they are also under pressure to be ‘perfect’ parents, and my sense is that for many of us despite our very best intentions there is a risk that too much kid-glove treatment could lead to a generation of more selfish, less well-adjusted kids.

Do you agree? Do parents need to change tack from the ‘gentle’ parenting techniques we hear so much about? Join the discussion below.